a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Jazz vs. Spurs: Bits from Practice and Shootaround

Quotage**Reporter to Derrick Favors: Why were you so effective against the Spurs in the Playoffs? You had a good series.
Derrick: [smiles shyly] Um… [laughs awkwardly] Just going out there and playing hard. You know, just playing hard every possession, ’cause you know, I wanted to win, at least one of the games. You know, so just going out there, playing hard and you know, just playing to my strengths.

**Favors on whether the Spurs know all there is to know about him: There’s a lot, a lot more stuff I can show. You know, I just gave them a sample [in the Playoffs], but there’s a lot more stuff I can show.

**Tyrone Corbin on his keys to preparing for the Spurs: We gotta make sure we know who we are, how we want to play, the tempo that we want to play at, and the sense of urgency that we have to play at right from the beginning of the game.

**Corbin on what characteristics the Spurs have that he’d like to see on the Jazz, “besides winning”: Winning. Winning and just staying together. And winning, and staying together.

**Randy Foye on the Spurs: A lot of times, you playing [the Spurs], and [Parker/Duncan/Ginobili] are not the guys that get you. It’s usually the Gary Neals, the Danny Greens, Boris Diaws, [Matt Bonners]*, those guys, you know, end up hitting some huge shots. You know, I got tremendous respect for Pop. He instill that confidence into his players that are not superstars…He push them, and he push them to the limit where, you know, they’re forced to play a way that’s gonna help them succeed.

* Foye didn’t actually say Matt Bonner, but it was clearly an oversight so I added it in for him.

Unintentional Dirty Quote Machines (UDQM)**Enes Kanter on what he’s doing with extended minutes: You know, just go hard. Every time, every minute I’m on the court, I’m just, you know, give myself 100 percent. And just going hard.

**Kanter on his go-to move: You know, big guys like weaker than me, I’ll say, just, just bang. Or if the guy’s like bigger than me, I’ll say spin move.

**Corbin on containing Tony Parker: We’re going to have different bodies on him. We try big guys, we try smaller guys. We try different things with him.

**Big Al on Tim Duncan: He been doing it for many years. Know how to do it.

**Big Al on Tim Duncan: To me, he just seem like he just know what to do, when he gon do it, and how he gon do it.

**Big Al on the effect of the Jazz’s three-point threats: And then they’ll leave me one-on-one with Duncan. Still, that’s, still, it’s not gonna be easy, walk in the park, scoring on him one-on-one, but I like my chances that way than having everybody just staying in, you know, my lap.

**Millsap on defending the Spurs: If they sit back and take those rhythm shots they used to getting, it’s gonna be a long night for us. But if we get them off of it, try not to make it so easy so they can penetrate, it’ll make it a lot better for us.

**Millsap on Big Al hanging out at the back of the media scrum during his interview (gif above): It’s hard to focus with that guy back there.

**Favors on his foot: At first, it was still kinda sore, but as the practice went along, it got kinda, started feeling pretty good, so I think, I hope, it be ready for tonight.